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With everyone from McDonald's to Chick-fil-A trying to be get in
on the coffee market, Dunkin' Donuts has decided that it is time
to step up its game with a dark roast.

The coffee and doughnut chain debuted its new dark-roast coffee
on Thursday, with plans to sell it nationwide starting September
22, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Dunkin' Donuts has never before in its 64-year history sold
dark-roast coffee. So why start now? Competition, of course.

Dunkin' Donuts has the reputation of being the light-roast ying
to Starbucks' dark-roast yang in the traditional coffee wars.
While Starbucks maintains a slightly more boutique image, with
darker roasts being seen as more complex and intense, Dunkin'
Donut's lighter roasts traditionally have been seen as having
more of a more mass appeal.

However, in 2012, Starbucks introduced a lighter-roast "blonde"
to give customers a " spectrum of options." Plus, today
Starbucks is far from Dunkin's only mainstream competition.
McDonald's is pushing hard for its McCafe line to catch on and
become a major moneymaker. Earlier in August, Chick-fil-A
decided to try to go gourmet with a new
specialty-grade coffee.

Even worse for Dunkin' Donuts, is there's more competition
invading from the north. Tim Hortons, often coined the Canadian
Dunkin' Donuts, announced plans to merge with Burger King
earlier this
week. The coffee and doughnut chain said it hopes that the
acquisition will help accelerate Tim Hortons's expansion in the
U.S. While it will probably be a few years before Tim Hortons can
be even close to a major competitor to Dunkin' in the states, in
some ways, the two chains are on similar schedules: Tim
Hortons just premiered its first-ever dark roast coffee in the
chain's 50-year history this past June.